Introduction

The PROFINET IO controller (master) is a TwinCAT supplement that turns every Beckhoff PC-based control system into a PROFINET IO controller. By installing the supplement, a standard Ethernet interface becomes a PROFINET master. This supplement can be used on PCs and Embedded PCs.

PROFINET can be simply coupled with EtherCAT in connection with the EL663x PROFINET terminal for the EtherCAT I/O system, wherein the terminal represents a slave on the EtherCAT side but acts as a controller towards PROFINET. In this way any EtherCAT network can also exchange data with PROFINET IO devices.

There are two kinds of PROFINET: PROFINET I/O and PROFINET CBA. TwinCAT supports PROFINET I/O.

In turn, 4 kinds of cyclic communication are defined within PROFINET I/O: RTClass1 to 3 and RToverUDP. The TwinCAT PROFINET I/O controller and the EL6631 presently support RTClass1, while the EL6632 can communicate over RTClass1 and RTClass3. All cycle times defined for RTClass1 are supported, from 1 ms in power-of-2 steps (1, 2, 4, 8,… ms).

The smallest cycle time presently supported by the EL6632 is 500 µs (for RTClass3).